Our summer camp was between two and three miles from Fort Hays, on Big Creek. Sometimes the stream ran along for a distance with no timber or underbrush to border it, but the place selected for our tents was under a fringe of good sized cotton-wood-trees. It was most gratifying to have this protection, and after a hot ride on the arid plain we came under the boughs and saw, with a real home feeling, the white tents gleaming in the shade. All about us the undulating country stretched its naked, glaring surface; not even clumps of bushes survived the scorching sun or the fierce tornadoes of wind that swept unchecked over the great unbroken stretch of country.
Professor Hayden so clearly explains the peculiar formation of the plains that I here insert a few paragraphs from his account of the matter:
We believe that at the close of the cretaceous period the ocean rolled uninterruptedly across the area now occupied by the Rocky Mountain Ranges. Near the close of the cretaceous era the surface had reached an elevation so great as to form long lines of separation between the waters of the Atlantic, on the east, and those of the Pacific on the west; and thus this great water-shed began to rise above the surrounding country. Then, also, began the existence of the first of that series of fresh-water lakes which we now know was a most prominent feature in the physical geography of this country during the tertiary period.
During the cretaceous period there was a gradual, slow elevation of the whole country west of the Mississippi; that about the close of that period the crust of the earth had been strained to its utmost tension, and long lines of fracture commenced, which formed the nucleus of our present mountain ranges. At the close of the cretaceous period, in the early days of the tertiary, when the crust had been elevated to its utmost tension, it broke sometimes in long lines of fracture, which gave birth to these lofty, continuous ranges along the eastern portion of the Rocky Mountains, as the Wind River, Big Horn, Black Hills, or the basaltic ridges formed by outbursts of melted matter arranged in series of sharp peaks or sierras.
It is possible to trace the growth of the continent, step by step, from the purely marine waters of the cretaceous ocean and the period when the mountain ranges were elevated in well-defined lines above the waters, causing the ocean to recede to the eastward on the one side, and to the westward on the other. The Rocky Mountains formed immense water-sheds, which gave birth to innumerable fresh-water streams, which fed those great tertiary lakes along the eastern slope, two out of the four or five, of great extent. We believe that one, the great Lignite basin, extends as far southward as California, possibly, westward over the mountains to Utah, and northward probably to the Arctic Sea, interrupted by the upheaval of mountain ranges.
It is chiefly remarkable for its fossil flora of fan-palms and other tropical plants, which points to the conclusion that along the shores of this great lake grew luxuriant forests like those in Central America and Brazil.
We who roamed the vast plains had every reason to corroborate all the investigations that the scientists made. The great trackless waste of land all about our camp was like nothing but the sea, and the rolling country we rode over day after day was as if the earth had been indented by waves of a powerful ocean. We came suddenly, on our marches, upon canons that were sharp fissures in the earth extending for many miles. These chasms, in an otherwise comparatively level surface, could mean nothing but cracks in the cooling earth's crust, through which a mighty rush of water had once plunged, deepening and widening the gorge. If we halted for luncheon, and spread our simple meal on the stunted grass, we could reach about us and pick up the vertebrae of fish that had once glided through water where we then sat.
In geological research the officers of our army have been of incalculable use to their Government. They explored the Indian infested countries long before the colleges or Government sent out scientists for the purpose. The remains of fishes, serpents, birds, crocodiles, lizards, turtles, bats, etc., were gathered by our officers and sent to the East. It was a strange sensation to find ourselves monarchs in a land which once was given up to all forms of vegetable and animal life, many varieties of which are now forever gone from the earth. The moss-agate was as common as the pebbles along a country road, and we broke off large flakes of rough surface to find incased in its transparent tomb exquisite sprays of delicate foliage, which reproduced in stone the fairy, fragile flora of a by-gone time. There was nothing remaining of that time of exquisite herbage. The dull sage-bush, or grease-root, or the sparse buffalo-grass, were all that the sun spared from its scorching rays.
The understanding was that we should have a permanent camp during the summer. By that it was meant that the regiment would have a headquarters in the field, and scouting parties be sent out from it. As we were so near a post, it was not difficult to get all the canvas we wanted. Our regimental quartermaster made requisition for the tents, which would be returned to the post in the autumn. We felt very rich, for, by borrowing from our Uncle Sam, we had as many rooms as some houses have—that is, calling each tent a room. The sitting-room was a hospital tent which is perhaps fourteen by sixteen. It was clean, and had no association of illness to keep one awake with imaginings at night. These huge tents are really designed for hospital purposes, but, fortunately, I never knew them to be used except in one epidemic of cholera. In the few cases of illness or injury occurring among the soldiers the patients were sent to a garrison hospital, for most posts have a regular building for this purpose. Opening out at the rear of our sitting-room was our own room, a wall tent ten by twelve. In pitching these tents General Custer had an eye for a tree with wide-spreading branches to shade us, and in order to utilize it he put the tents on the side bank running down to the stream. Of course it was necessary to build up a rough embankment of stones and earth, and that left the tent floor at the rear almost up to the limbs of the tree. We then thought how foolish of us not to continue the floor around the tree. The company carpenter built such a comfortable little platform, with a railing, that we felt as if we had a real gallery to our canvas house; and sitting out there, Tom smoking, I sewing, and General Custer reading, we imagined Big Creek to be the Hudson, and the cotton-wood, whose foliage is anything but thick, to be a graceful maple or a stately, branching elm. Our brother Tom, while he enjoyed our arbor, refused to call it anything but the "beer-garden"—but calling names did not destroy our delight. The floors of the tents were an especial luxury, for every board in that region counted, as it was difficult to get lumber. The cotton-wood warped before it was fairly nailed down, and a pine plank even now looks to me like rare wealth.
The canvas of our rear tent was cut and bound, and a roller of wood to keep it down in wind-storms was sewed in, so that when tied up it left a broad window, seven feet wide, opening on the platform and giving a fine circulation of air. A huge tarpaulin of very thick canvas, used to cover grain and military stores, for which there was not room in the storehouses, was spread over the large tent and extended far in front, so that we had a wide porch, under which we sat most of the time.
It was with great relief that I saw the holes dug in which to sink the poles at the four corners of each tent. These